Relationship with T vs other relationships?

How do you make relationships with others better than your relationship with your T? Sometimes I think it's too hard. People in real life don't care and they're busy with their own lives.

Why do relationships with others have to be better than your relationship with your T? Better yet, how can real life relationships really be compared to that with a T? I mean, therapist relationships aren't like real life. People in our real life don't have to validate everything we say. Real life relationships are reciprocal while therapy relationships are really, by design, all about us. If you expect your real life relationships to be all about you, hate to tell you, but you are going to be gravely disappointed.

Perhaps the question you need to ask is how can you learn to accept the reciprocity of real life relationships? How can you learn to be in a give and take relationship and be accepting of the fact that the person on the other side of your relationships is just as flawed and busy and stressed and struggling as you are? How can reach a place of understanding that it isn't that people don't care about you, but that, like you, they have deal with and live their own life first. That's all a person can do.

I've been feeling this lately myself.

Especially since I've been a working adult, I thought that moving to a new part of the country would be a great way to meet new people. I'm finding that people have well established lives and don't seem to have room for "one more friend." Some married people treat me strangely too. Guys seem to blurt out "I'm married" when I'm just having a conversation with them. Married women have actually told me that if someone hasn't been in a marriage or serious relationship in a long time then "something is wrong with them…ooops I don't mean you."

I struggle with this so much. CBT T wants to make it a goal for me to find real life people to get close to. He always seems to emphasize how temporary leaning on him is, which hurts. My longtime T was ok with the emotional dependency as long as I was doing the work in therapy.

No other relationship in my life has felt as loving, close, and no where else have I felt as deeply connected and bonded with another. This all probably doesn't sound healthy. But it is what I have.

I've dated (long ago) and I have some close and not so close and family that I care for. But it isn't the same. Has anyone out there in PC land made the jump from bonding w/T to translating that into RL situations?

No, I disagree. There are genuine caring people out there.
But, the relationship between you and your T is unique and works because of that fact.
Friends are equal partners, not our T's and perhaps they too need 'you' and not always 'you' needing them.
When our work is complete on therapy, that thinking you illustrated here changes.

just as a "PS"…

I really try to make an effort with people outside of therapy to ask about how they are doing, remember their family members' names, what they like and don't like and I put a huge filter on when talking about myself--which I try to minimize anyways. I feel like no one wants to hear me whine, so I keep my issues under wraps. Yet I am not making headway getting closer to people.

I would love to hear what others do too.

My T explained to me that when I minimize how much I disclose about my own issues, I am actually not allowing others to get to know the real me. And I won't be able to have close healthy relationships if I keep doing this. That's probably one reason why it's easier to feel connected to our Ts then people in rl: we are our true selves with T.

I guess, first, I don't expect my real life relationships to resemble my relationship with my T in any way, shape, or form. Even with my husband, I know our relationship isn't going to have that kind of dynamic, and my husband and I are pretty open with each other. However, he has his baggage; I have mine. They interplay off of each other. With a therapist, the therapist should be keeping their stuff out of the relationship and should be focused entirely on the client, but that isn't how real life relationships work. Real people aren't therapists. They have their own stuff that is skewing everything they are thinking. They are allowed to be judgmental because they aren't therapists with that whole unconditional positive regard thing going on. Real people get distracted and show it; therapists may get distracted, but good ones hopefully hide it well or are able to refocus their attention after years of practice.

I've found to build real life relationships, I have to just be myself, but understand that others may not always click with me. That's okay. I can have acquaintance, surface level friends.

In fact, other than surface conversations, it is likely you won't actually bond on a deep level with all that many people. That is entirely normal. Truly, deep, intimate relationships don't come in large quantities, and they can take lots of time to nurture to that point. I've found being a good listener, allowing time for a relationship to grow in depth from just chit chatting to deeper intimacy takes time and attention. I don't share deeply personal things with people quickly. I've found we need time to develop a rapport, time to find commonality, before we ever reach that level. It takes patience and just a consistency of checking in with that person.

I think we see people who are really social and equate that with having a lot of close, personal friends, but the reality is that even the most bubbly, social individuals probably only have a few truly close, intimate friendships where they feel comfortable talking about their deepest feelings and issues.

I've started finally developing a very close-knit network of friends. It is small, but their caring is genuine and I know should I need their help and support, all I need do is ask. These are people who I have taken the time to just sit with and listen to, people who, over time, we have discovered our common struggles and hopes. We didn't start out that close, but we took the time to just listen and get a feel for each other. The rest just developed slowly as our understanding of who we are became clearer.

Too one sided for my liking... Plus I hate the topic
I take therapy as stg a have to do in order to get better- like taking a pill. Never ceased to amaze me that some (a lot not just you Rain) posters here seems to enjoy it...
I do kind of like my T as a person but once I'm finished I'll be so glad to never see him again.

I don't consider the interaction with the therapist to be better than my real life relationships. My real relationships are fine. I find therapy appointments to be like torture.

I think I'm just a failure at relationships. I've learned to avoid people for too long, and now I try to put myself out there and it is just too slow a process for me, people are too weird, I am too picky or vice versa. I'm starting to qualify my relationships in terms of emotional connection which is what I think I crave so much about therapy, and really I cant find it anywhere. Maybe it's because everyone I know already has some source, or maybe something is wrong with me, I'm really not sure. I cant think of anyone I even talk to as much as my therapist (as much as 1 hour a week) except for this chat room.

My relationships have improved alongside of developments in my relationship with my therapist. That includes dumping toxic ones as well as simply appreciating ones just as they are, however imperfect. There is still beauty and depth of feeling. Human connections in general seem more precious and also delicate.

It is not really in comparison to my relationship with my therapist. It is rather the growth of more range and depth of interpersonal experience that has emerged through the work of therapy, which in my case is relationship centered.

I do believe at least at this moment in time my therapist has a unique understanding of me and I do feel more understood by him than anyone else. But that doesn't undermine how I feel about others. It is just different. I also feel this more accepting type of understanding with people I'm less close to who have developed those capacities to a high degree. Zen masters for instance.

Not everyone has the balance and equanimity of a Zen master nor do I expect that of people. It sure is nice to know that there are people who work on themselves to that degree and are dedicated to others and to the world in a way that feels very advanced and admirable, but they also accept what are called imperfections to a high degree as well.

I guess if you want to bond with people on a deeper level, you either have to take it slowly and gradually reveal more vulnerable things about yourself. Or you have to be in a setting where people are expecting to relate to others in a deeper way. Things like religious or spiritual settings, book clubs, some kinds of volunteer activities, etc. Many people are in fact busy and don't need more friends, but you have to have faith that there are other people out there also looking. And you have to believe that you have something to offer.

Another way of working on different relationships would be group therapy. That's more of an intermediate step, but many people find it extremely helpful.

A real life relationship that worked like a relationship with your T would be totally dysfunctional. Your T's job is to listen to you intently, without judgment or condemnation, to help you and to give you unconditional acceptance or positive regard no matter how selfishly or badly you behave. They're not supposed to ask for reciprocity. You don't run to their assistance. They don't text or email you in the middle of the night because they're lonely or feeling antsy or burden you with their life problems and woes.

Healthy real life relationships are reciprocal, give and take, sharing each others lives and problems and woes, as well as having fun and conversation and intellectual stimulation together.

I wouldn't want to be stuck in real life relationships that were as one sided as a patient-T relationship. I guess if we want real life relationships that give us similar feelings and support and kindness, then we'd better be willing to extend that to the people around us. Instead of saying we have no one to support us, we might start asking ourselves who we support in real life and if we do it without judgment and condemnation. I've tried. Sometimes I can and sometimes I can't. If people in real life test me or reject me or push me away, I don't take it. Life is too short to put up with the crap people throw at their Ts all the time and most T's patiently take.

Seriously, nobody in good mental health would take the kind of crap people throw at their Ts. Your T probably doesn't take it from people in their real life. Think about it. Would you take people treating you that way and offer them acceptance and positive regard in return? I don't see people here offering boat loads of acceptance to their Ts. A single annoyed email or text message can bring on plans to file complaints against them. If we treat people like that in real life, we'll end up lonely and isolated.

There are people here training to be Ts. If any are willing to talk about it, I wonder if they'd comment on whether or not they treat real life friends and partners with the same kind of unconditional positive regard and acceptance they're being trained to offer patients, no matter what they do (short of violence?) And if you are, how's that working? Maybe some people are just more patient and spiritual than I am and can pull it off.

I'm in training but since I have had a longer time practicing as a Zen Buddhist it is not so easy to answer the question about the differences between how I approach clients and how I approach others. The same basic principles overlap as far as my situation is concerned. In fact, my choice to become a therapist grew out of my spiritual practice, which centers on the cessation of suffering, commitment to others, compassion, acceptance, awareness, kindness, etc. I generally feel more free to express my own stuff and set limits with people who I have relationships with, but not always. It depends on the nature of the relationship and the person involved, which is also the case but to a different degree with clients.

I don't believe clients throw crap at therapists - but if the exchange between therapist and client is considered crap - remember therapists themselves deliberately set the game up so that they would get said "crap" thrown at them by clients. I don't worry about the therapists. They get paid and they chose it.

I much prefer the reciprocal nature of real life relationships. I enjoy being able to listen, give, and offer compassion in return-- and find the hardest part of therapy the fact that it is not my place to offer those things to T when she offers them to me. What is wonderful about RL relationships is that you can stay up until 3am having mutual conversations where you both share and both get to know one another on a deeper level-- and you can do so over dinners, at shows, at the gym, on vacations, etc. With T, you are confined to the space of the therapy room. There are also boundariws in therapy with respect to touch and closeness that don't exist in real life-- so I get more of those needs met outside of therapy. I do love my T and deeply value that relationship-- just not more than my RL relationships. I've had the same best friend for 16 years, and there is no one who understands me and loves me more than he does. He's the one who would drive 500 miles in the middle of the night to stand at my bedside if I really needed him to. I do not expect a T would do the same. A T can also not take the place of a romantic relationship. Granted, I am just entering into a new relationship so perhaps my opinion on this is clouded-- but there is nothing more exciting and wonderful than sharing all of those firsts with someone new and getting to know them on a deeper level and feeling like you're falling in love with someone who is falling in love back. Over time, that kind of relationship will "settle down" but, hopefully, it will grow deeper and more secure. At the end of the day, those are the people who really love you the most-- even if T may be a better listener sometimes. The relationships are different and I value them all, but I certainly put more time into nurturing my RL relationships.

Therapists do have to be able to tolerate a certain amount of what many would not put up with or want to be exposed to or even know about. This is particularly true of analysts who by and large are trained to handle very intense and extreme affective and mental states. One analyst I recently read described how a patient came in with a large bag, pulled out a butcher knife, held it above his head, and said, "Are you afraid of me?" The analyst immediately, "Yes, I certainly am." To which she answered, "Good, that means I don't have to kill you." He concludes by saying "The trick is to figure out how to not get killed by your patients" as if he had just shook someone's hand and moved on.

This is so true. Therapists most definitely have to tolerate a lot of behavior from clients that they don't from anyone else. A friend of mine was doing an eval work a first time client. She was taking notes and had to look down for a minute. When she looked to see the client drop his pants. He stood there naked from the waist down. She told me she just looked back down and told him to put his pants back on. Then she continued on with the interview (though it's safe to say she didn't work with him after that). And a professor of mine was stalked by a client - going to her house and even trashing her car. She never filed a complaint because some colleagues had suggested she had crossed boundaries and led him on. So she at risk of having a complaint filed against her. She did eventually terminate but not until it became too dangerous to continue.

I see that as just what happens when you are a professional - plus it makes good stories and makes the job more fun. I have had clients disrobe in court, try to throw punches, drive by my house, bring a gun to my office and wave it around and so on. Some of those are my court appointed mental health clients and some were public defender clients and some were just private clients in civil cases. Some of the stuff my clients have done in holdover cells is not what I would think to do if in such a place - but they did. It is how clients in all sorts of professions are.
I have found it funny a few times when in court with my mental health clients - how scared the therapists and mds act of them when I am the one sitting next to them and I can handle it without getting all wigged out. I once had a client who was sitting next to me at counsel table engaging in some unsavory but not especially harmful behavior and the psychiatrist was so unhinged the court called a recess and yelled at him. I lost but at least the md got taken down a peg or two.

I figured this too, when things were starting to unravel at speed for me a couple of years ago. I would hint at my problems with my close friends in a humourous or philosophical way, making it very clear I was not asking them for anything. I'd always have massive tendancies towards this, but it became a lot worse when I was really on my knees.

This is a great way to shut people out, though. I started to take risks and gradually become more real about stuff and accept more support from friends. Sometimes it blew up in my face (massive row with Best Friend A, we didn't speak for a year, hurtful argument with my brother last month) but mostly it has breathed new life back into friendships where I had forgotten how to be a full person.

Agree 100% with all this.

I'm glad this thread is of interest to many as I thought it might be. I'm reading all the posts; thank you.

Ironically I just had a discussion about this with T. Both with my current and ex T I made it clear from day one that I'm there to work on my anxiety, not to cure me of being a loner. Both agreed to that. But ex T, after I got attached (something I worked to do because I thought it would make therapy more effective) - anyway, after I became attached ex tried to get me to pursue Sociable so what I had with her, I could have with others. My response was that therapy is different so what's the point? Because apples are useful right now, how would that motivate me to pursue oranges?

This is very true but I have to say, quite depressing. This is something I really need to work on more with my therapist.
Shet keeps telling me I want an "ideal" relationship with people. She's right. I guess I'm not good at surface level relationships: I want the "real deal", the deep bond. Otherwise, I'm not interested.
Sigh.

Totally. After a certain age, it's like "well, nope we're not accepting anybody else, sorry".
Most people have their friends and they're not interested in forming new friendships. Like you, I've moved around a lot and having to create an entire social life from scratch is incredibly hard.
That's why the relationship I have with my therapist is so important to me and yeah, I don't know if it's healthy either. But there you go.

I get that, but when I finally accepted that it is quite normal to only have a few of those kinds of deep relationships, I appreciated them more what what they were AND I became more comfortable with also appreciating those more surface friendships I've developed too. I've realized those surface friendships also have a great deal of merit. Having those friends I just banter back and forth with about nonsense and just have fun with IS fun and uplifitng. They make me happy and lighthearted which is really important too in my life. Relationships don't all have to be deep and serious and heavily meaningful. In fact, that would be a bit heavy and depressing if that's all I had when I think about it.